Sublime eclectic mayhem. That’s been my playlist project and musical life, one that begins with The Muppet Movie soundtrack and later involves performing hymns, death metal, surf, and bluegrass. I’ve played in theaters, tents, and basements, for multi-stage festivals and squirrel rodeos. I’ve written and recorded music for The Drunken Odyssey. Sublime eclectic mayhem. A warning and a welcome for joyous noise, for those navigating what Beckett called “this bitch of an earth.”

(From a series of cut-ups using a page from each of the following: Soulbane Strategem: Diabolical Subterfuge That Threatens to Destroy Us by Norman Jermundsen and Gas City by Loren Estleman.)

IV. A New Equilibrium

He would soon be swept in with his trombones in the hallway, a kind of other reader’s crow. She would magma the engine to nothing as if she were being driven past the city, both brown in the justice of the west.

A paranoic would feel a lamp holding an object that could see commercial break in the scene, taped at different angles. If this wasn’t the ballroom, but the next ballroom, open the sickle, throughout the morning. 

Sylvia had declared hands and the attention to detail between the cut-off male interior from the house rubbed to a gleam so deep of you. She’s her blood. I walked out of reach.

Swept in with the Trombones

Listen on Tidal. Listen on Spotify.

1. “It Takes A Lot of Man” – Country Mama Annie
2. “State of Flux” – GoGo Penguin, Rakhi Singh, Manchester Collective
3. “String Generator” – Ori Barel
4. “My Romance” – Red Garland
5. “Jardín Discreto” – Ale Hop
6. “The Art of Emptiness” – Cryptopsy
7. “Radio Signals from Jazz Keys” – Matthew Shipp
8. “Sonatæ Violino solo “1681”: Sonata No. 3 in F Major, C. III: 140. Presto – Adagio – Allegro – Adagio” – Bojan Čičić, The Illyria Consort
9. “Emptiness” – thruoutin
10. “Bloodsport” – Tropical Fuck Storm
11. “Lac Noir – La Serpente 05. Le Cercle (1990-92)” – Bernard Parmegiani
12. “Lay a Garland” – Tenebrae, Nigel Short
13. “Swerve” – Hampus Lindwall
14. “Zombi 2 (Sequence 1)” – Fabio Frizzi

Stephen McClurg (Episode 473 & 666) composes and improvises in Serenity Dagger, The Abdomen, and other projects. Along with session work for mid-Alabama singer/songwriters, he frequently collaborates with musicians across the state adding bass, guitar, and synths to friends’ recordings. He currently writes reviews for Horror DNA and is the substitute low end wrangler for Mobile-based punk rock band Future Hate. You can find out more about his work here.